


what now?

by HuntressFirefall



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Angst?, I Don't Even Know, Inner Dialogue, Other, not sure where this is going, or if it's going at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24359941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HuntressFirefall/pseuds/HuntressFirefall
Summary: Life has changed in the blink of an eye for Lio Fotia.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	what now?

Lio Fotia doesn't know who he is anymore.

At least when he was growing up an only child, he still had parents and a place to call home. He was someone's son. As he reached his teenage years, he started to have an idea of what he wanted to do with his life, who he would become someday that was other than the quiet teenager that got the whispers as he passed by in the school hallway because he was “weird”. Too serious, too shy, too not like everyone else.

And then, that day when the usual group of kids at school seemed especially determined to make him the outcast, put the emphasis on him being different for not wanting to party, get in trouble, have a girlfriend from the cheerleading squad, he was just as determined to not let them win. Violence didn't help anyone, but he was planning on just walking away. After all, they were the ones who felt the need for such useless confrontations.

But then the leader, the star of the football team, got angry enough when Lio wouldn't take the bait and laid one heavy hand on Lio's fragile shoulder.

That was when the flames first happened, and in an even greater irony Lio became the outcast after all.

It was also when the voices began.

_We will help you. We will protect you. You are strong. You are brave. You are worthy of our strength. Use the anger you hold in wisely. Use it to help us burn it all._

When his parents found out about his first Burnish spasm, that had sent the leader of the gang of bullies who had harassed him from day one of high school to the hospital with a severely burned hand that he would lose two days later, he was no longer their son.

_You are not alone. We are with you._ The flames became his only friends, the only thing he could believe in. He packed what little he had, and set out on his own. But as he moved about the city, trying to find places to get food and shelter, the urge to burn things became too great. And at first, he found he couldn't control the flames at all. When he was threatened – by the addict in the alley who wanted money for a fix, by the creepy guy in the rusty black van with no windows – the flames came unbidden.

They found the addict burned to a cinder in the alley. The van was a torched-out shell with scorched bones piled in the drivers' seat.

Lio was forced to run, leave the city behind before the trail of random blazes gave him away. The Freeze Force was already on alert, trying to sniff out the newest Burnish.

_Do not run. We are here. We will protect you. Burn them all. If they hurt you, they hurt us._

Lio found out quickly that it was painful to hold the urge to burn in. But as he followed the road out of the city into the desert under cover of night, he decided to bargain with the flames. _Do the things I ask of you, and we will coexist._

That was how Lio began to realize the flames could be trained, could assemble and create things out of their living sparks. But to learn to use them properly, he needed to find a way to cover the flares.

Back then, the Freeze Force didn't have all the technology it would later on. Their heat-sensors weren't as precise in the beginning, and so during the blazing hot desert days, Lio toyed with the new weapon that lived within his own body. He found he could mold the flames with little resistance, and decided to see how far he could go. A bow and arrows for hunting food. A motorcycle for transportation (because he'd always wanted one, so why not).

The dragon was an accident.

He'd let his mind wander a bit too far into the grief over being turned away by his own family once he'd become a Burnish. Never mind that it hadn't been his choice. Now he had no one, nothing, forced to hunt like a forager or slip into the town late at night, fighting the voices wanting him to burn everything down even as he willed the flames to form the shapes of mundane things – like a key that could melt the lock on the convenience store door.

It had been after returning from one of those trips, where he'd found it too difficult to contain the flames and ended up setting the little mom and pop store ablaze, that he finally let himself snap. Allowed himself to vent all the anger. _Why me? Why did you choose me? Why did you take what little I had away?_

_Because you are strong. You understand us. See what your anger can do?_

The flare rose up into the night sky before Lio could reign it in, the dragon's head forming as Lio let out the first of many anguished cries. Immersing himself in the protective flames he mounted the dragon, knowing he could no longer stay where he was or they would find him.

He disappeared deep into the desert, alone until much later (time meant nothing in the wastelands, especially when one was now for all intent and purpose immortal; it could have been weeks, months, or years) he came upon a Burnish settlement being raided by the Freeze Force.

By then, the flames told him, he was the most powerful of his kind. No longer an outcast, but a leader, with people to care about, and who cared about him.

And of course, the voices within him, who had joined the chorus of the voices that embraced the Burnish, his people.

But now, the flames were gone.

No more reassuring voices, speaking of their protection. No more creating whatever he needed to defend himself, sustain himself, in his bare hands. When he and Galo had literally burned the entire planet, the Promare's need for combustion was completed; the need they themselves told him of. He had felt them leaving his body, the voices laughing in joy as they returned to where they belonged.

Oh, the irony of Lio helping the Promare to return to where they belonged, to who they were, without even a goodbye, or a debt of gratitude. _You helped us burn it all. We are free._

And just like that, he was back to being Lio Fotia, quiet, weird teenager, with no one to help him with where to go next. One that had seen and lived entirely too much.

What now?

**Author's Note:**

> My main takeaway from the movie Promare was "hold up... what are these millions of people who are no longer Burnish supposed to do with themselves now?" so I guess this conveys that angst and uncertainty. And just like Lio, I don't know where it's going, or if it will go anywhere else. I don't know that I will be writing anything else for Promare, but I've been sitting on this drabble? one shot? idek what to call it for about a month and when I went back and read it I liked it, so here it is.


End file.
